UK: Brexit Brake?

Parliament now has to vote on Brexit. How will recent Brexit
developments affect your business?

The High Court has ruled that Parliament must now vote on
triggering the mechanism to leave the E.U. Sterling spiked upwards
in response. The Government has stated that it will appeal. In the
meantime, Teresa May has given her first keynote speech on worker
rights under Brexit; and the Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport
has confirmed that "it will be expected and quite normal
for us to opt into" the new EU Data Protection Rules in
the meantime.

So what does this all mean for UK employers?

Impact of High Court judgement

We think there are good prospects of this going immediately to
the Supreme Court; and fair prospects of the Government losing all
over again. It has already proven a tough task to argue that the
Government can unilaterally overrule Acts of Parliament, never mind
the suggestion that we are dealing with a treaty and so the Royal
Prerogative can be evoked. But what does this mean for
businesses?

It means that there is a risk that
MPs vote against invoking Article 50 despite the outcome of the
referendum. In turn, this may result in not exiting the E.U. and
still being able to access the Single Market. It may also have an
effect on the value of Sterling in the short to medium term

If this doesn't happen then it
may still mean that the triggering of Article 50 is delayed, which
will mean that UK businesses are exposed to unamended EU law for
longer. That's not an insignificant proposition. By way of
example, it means being exposed to an undiluted version of the new
EU General Data Protection Regulations for longer. These
Regulations require a re-evaluation of all data-flows in every
aspect of their business operation and undertake significant
compliance work in order to avoid potential fines of up to 2-4% of
their global business turnover come May 2018. There is now all the
more reason to start preparing before consultant companies jack up
their prices next year.

Worker rights if or when Brexit goes ahead

"... [L]et me be absolutely clear: existing
workers' legal rights will continue to be guaranteed in law -
and they will be guaranteed as long as I am Prime
Minister".

This hardly signals an immediate unburdening of Brussels'
bureaucracy. And it's no small irony that "The Great
Repeal Bill" is actually designed to automatically incorporate
all of EU law into domestic legislation, pending later review.
There are good reasons to assume little would change in the
short-term under Brexit. After all, a significant proportion of the
UK's employment law comes from the EU but much of it was built
on legislation already enacted by the Government. On that basis, no
one really expects an immediate repeal of unfair dismissal law,
discrimination law, or family friendly rights.

So would anything change?

Yes, probably. The most likely legislation includes:

The Transfer of Undertakings
(Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006, particularly where
this affects outsourcing arrangements and the more awkward
collective consultation obligations.

The Working Time Regulations 1998,
particularly in respect of the 48-hour opt out; and to include
amendments to ensure that overtime payments are not included in
holiday pay, and holidays are not accrued whilst workers are off
sick. Also, don't totally rule out reduction of annual holiday
entitlement. If Brexit goes badly and the Government perceives the
need to allow business to reduce employment costs, this may still
be introduced under the guise of giving businesses and workers the
"freedom to contract" on these issues. Indeed given that
the judgement of the European Courts of Justice would cease to
apply, expect recent case law to be relitigated on this
subject.

The Agency Workers Regulations 2010.
These may be repealed in their entirety, giving businesses a lot
more flexibility about how they engage contractors and agency
workers which will help to appease vocal lobbyists complaining
about the effect of the recent UBER judgment.

The Human Rights Act 1998. We expect
special attention to be paid to the Act, given the Conservative
Party's longstanding objection to it. We think that issues on
deportation and privacy will have the strongest focus.

The National Minimum Wage Act 1998.
We think that review of this is not inconceivable if Brexit
negotiations proved so tough that the Government adopted a stance
of putting the UK in a position to undercut European
businesses.

What about freedom of movement?

Business immigration would be in sharp focus. What happens to
British nationals living and working in other EU countries and
those nationals of other EU member states living and working in
Britain? Will they lose their automatic right to do so? Teresa May
has deliberately not given guarantees. If no amnesty is granted in
respect of their preferred arrangements, it's reasonable to
assume that they would be given sufficient time to obtain
citizenship of the country in which they are residing and to return
home if they fail to do so. We would be surprised if the Government
did not introduce a points quota system to allow the best and
brightest to remain in Britain regardless, but even this is not
certain as the Government appears intent on delivering on
restricted immigration as a key part of its response to the
referendum.

So what does this all mean for British business?

It means that British business needs to keep its eye on the
ball.

If the Government wins the appeal, be
ready for Brexit in March 2017. If Brexit goes bad, then one of the
few cards that the Government has to play is a threatened reduction
in corporation tax or worker rights which would undercut former
European trading partners. It will therefore pay to be on top of
any changes. Otherwise, for those trading with directly within
Europe it will be essential to monitor the progress with
negotiations and to lobby for your interest to be recognised.

If the Government loses the appeal,
be prepared for a Brexit Brake as Parliament prepares to debate
this further. This may see Parliament having more say in Brexit and
may even result in a "Soft Brexit" with the UK remaining
in the EEA with much the same effect as membership of the EU.

To subscribe to our Brexit Board Briefings, or to discuss
Business Regulations and / or Employment issues more widely, please
contact
Andrew Humphrey, Head of Employment

The content of this article is intended to provide a general
guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought
about your specific circumstances.

To print this article, all you need is to be registered on Mondaq.com.

Click to Login as an existing user or Register so you can print this article.

With the summer holidays drawing to a close, the coming months are set to be busy for many HR practitioners. Below we look at some of the key employment and immigration issues on the HR agenda this autumn:

This service is completely free. Access 250,000 archived articles from 100+ countries and get a personalised email twice a week covering developments (and yes, our lawyers like to think you’ve read our Disclaimer).

Email Address

Company Name

Password

Confirm Password

Position

Mondaq Topics -- Select your Interests

Accounting

Anti-trust

Commercial

Compliance

Consumer

Criminal

Employment

Energy

Environment

Family

Finance

Government

Healthcare

Immigration

Insolvency

Insurance

International

IP

Law Performance

Law Practice

Litigation

Media & IT

Privacy

Real Estate

Strategy

Tax

Technology

Transport

Wealth Mgt

Regions

Africa

Asia

Asia Pacific

Australasia

Canada

Caribbean

Europe

European Union

Latin America

Middle East

U.K.

United States

Worldwide Updates

Check to state you have read and agree to our Terms and Conditions

Terms & Conditions and Privacy Statement

Mondaq.com (the Website) is owned and managed by Mondaq Ltd and as a user you
are granted a non-exclusive, revocable license to access the Website under its
terms and conditions of use. Your use of the Website constitutes your agreement
to the following terms and conditions of use. Mondaq Ltd may terminate your use
of the Website if you are in breach of these terms and conditions or if Mondaq
Ltd decides to terminate your license of use for whatever reason.

Use of www.mondaq.com

You may use the Website but are required to register as a user if you wish to
read the full text of the content and articles available (the Content). You may
not modify, publish, transmit, transfer or sell, reproduce, create derivative
works from, distribute, perform, link, display, or in any way exploit any of the
Content, in whole or in part, except as expressly permitted in these terms &
conditions or with the prior written consent of Mondaq Ltd. You may not use
electronic or other means to extract details or information about Mondaq.com’s
content, users or contributors in order to offer them any services or products
which compete directly or indirectly with Mondaq Ltd’s services and products.

Disclaimer

Mondaq Ltd and/or its respective suppliers make no representations about the
suitability of the information contained in the documents and related graphics
published on this server for any purpose. All such documents and related
graphics are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind. Mondaq Ltd and/or
its respective suppliers hereby disclaim all warranties and conditions with
regard to this information, including all implied warranties and conditions of
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement.
In no event shall Mondaq Ltd and/or its respective suppliers be liable for any
special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting
from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence
or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use or
performance of information available from this server.

The documents and related graphics published on this server could include
technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically added
to the information herein. Mondaq Ltd and/or its respective suppliers may make
improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described
herein at any time.

Registration

Mondaq Ltd requires you to register and provide information that personally
identifies you, including what sort of information you are interested in, for
three primary purposes:

To allow you to personalize the Mondaq websites you are visiting.

To enable features such as password reminder, newsletter alerts, email a
colleague, and linking from Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) to your website.

Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) do not sell or provide your details to third
parties other than information providers. The reason we provide our information
providers with this information is so that they can measure the response their
articles are receiving and provide you with information about their products and
services.

If you do not want us to provide your name and email address you may opt out
by clicking here .

If you do not wish to receive any future announcements of products and
services offered by Mondaq by clicking here .

Information Collection and Use

We require site users to register with Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) to
view the free information on the site. We also collect information from our
users at several different points on the websites: this is so that we can
customise the sites according to individual usage, provide 'session-aware'
functionality, and ensure that content is acquired and developed appropriately.
This gives us an overall picture of our user profiles, which in turn shows to
our Editorial Contributors the type of person they are reaching by posting
articles on Mondaq (and its affiliate sites) – meaning more free content for
registered users.

We are only able to provide the material on the Mondaq (and its affiliate
sites) site free to site visitors because we can pass on information about the
pages that users are viewing and the personal information users provide to us
(e.g. email addresses) to reputable contributing firms such as law firms who
author those pages. We do not sell or rent information to anyone else other than
the authors of those pages, who may change from time to time. Should you wish us
not to disclose your details to any of these parties, please tick the box above
or tick the box marked "Opt out of Registration Information Disclosure" on the
Your Profile page. We and our author organisations may only contact you via
email or other means if you allow us to do so. Users can opt out of contact when
they register on the site, or send an email to unsubscribe@mondaq.com with “no
disclosure” in the subject heading

Mondaq News Alerts

In order to receive Mondaq News Alerts, users have to complete a separate
registration form. This is a personalised service where users choose regions and
topics of interest and we send it only to those users who have requested it.
Users can stop receiving these Alerts by going to the Mondaq News Alerts page
and deselecting all interest areas. In the same way users can amend their
personal preferences to add or remove subject areas.

Cookies

A cookie is a small text file written to a user’s hard drive that contains an
identifying user number. The cookies do not contain any personal information
about users. We use the cookie so users do not have to log in every time they
use the service and the cookie will automatically expire if you do not visit the
Mondaq website (or its affiliate sites) for 12 months. We also use the cookie to
personalise a user's experience of the site (for example to show information
specific to a user's region). As the Mondaq sites are fully personalised and
cookies are essential to its core technology the site will function
unpredictably with browsers that do not support cookies - or where cookies are
disabled (in these circumstances we advise you to attempt to locate the
information you require elsewhere on the web). However if you are concerned
about the presence of a Mondaq cookie on your machine you can also choose to
expire the cookie immediately (remove it) by selecting the 'Log Off' menu option
as the last thing you do when you use the site.

Some of our business partners may use cookies on our site (for example,
advertisers). However, we have no access to or control over these cookies and we
are not aware of any at present that do so.

Log Files

We use IP addresses to analyse trends, administer the site, track movement,
and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use. IP addresses are not
linked to personally identifiable information.

Links

This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that Mondaq (or
its affiliate sites) are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other
sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read
the privacy statements of these third party sites. This privacy statement
applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Surveys & Contests

From time-to-time our site requests information from users via surveys or
contests. Participation in these surveys or contests is completely voluntary and
the user therefore has a choice whether or not to disclose any information
requested. Information requested may include contact information (such as name
and delivery address), and demographic information (such as postcode, age
level). Contact information will be used to notify the winners and award prizes.
Survey information will be used for purposes of monitoring or improving the
functionality of the site.

Mail-A-Friend

If a user elects to use our referral service for informing a friend about our
site, we ask them for the friend’s name and email address. Mondaq stores this
information and may contact the friend to invite them to register with Mondaq,
but they will not be contacted more than once. The friend may contact Mondaq to
request the removal of this information from our database.

Security

This website takes every reasonable precaution to protect our users’
information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your
information is protected using firewalls and other security technology. If you
have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to
webmaster@mondaq.com.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information

If a user’s personally identifiable information changes (such as postcode),
or if a user no longer desires our service, we will endeavour to provide a way
to correct, update or remove that user’s personal data provided to us. This can
usually be done at the “Your Profile” page or by sending an email to EditorialAdvisor@mondaq.com.

Notification of Changes

If we decide to change our Terms & Conditions or Privacy Policy, we will
post those changes on our site so our users are always aware of what information
we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If at any point we decide to use personally identifiable information in a manner
different from that stated at the time it was collected, we will notify users by
way of an email. Users will have a choice as to whether or not we use their
information in this different manner. We will use information in accordance with
the privacy policy under which the information was collected.

How to contact Mondaq

If for some reason you believe Mondaq Ltd. has not adhered to these
principles, please notify us by e-mail at problems@mondaq.com and we will use
commercially reasonable efforts to determine and correct the problem promptly.